4 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Guide

146 Replies

PLEASE NOTE: the guide below was written back when Litecoin mining on GPU’s was profitable. I recommend the AntMiner L3+ Litecoin Miner (ROI in about 100 days, currently) or building an Ethereum mining rig by following my 6 GPU Mining Rig Guide. Happy Mining!

Home-built crypto currency mining rigs are a great way to invest in the new digital currencies, while avoiding some of the risk involved in purchasing the coins outright. This guide will show you how to assemble a fairly easy to build ‘milk crate mining rig’. This rig is capable of mining at over 2,800Kh/s. As of the date this guide was updated (2/20/2014), a 4 GPU Litecoin mining rig like this can generate over $350 USD worth of Litecoins per month or around $500 USD worth of Dogecoin, and will cost you between $2,000-$2,500 to build. If you want to see the live current calculation yourself, click here, for a pre-configured Litecoin calculator or here for a Dogecoin mining calculator. You’ll just have to enter your electricity rate to calculate your net profits. I have built several of these rigs for myself and friends. Build time should be no more than 2 hrs.

Mining Hardware Build List

  • Power Supply – $250 –  1300 watt Gold Rated PSU  –  If you are having a hard time finding these larger power supplies in stock, an alternative is to get  two lower powered 750 watt Gold Rated PSU’s and connect them together with this add2psu adapter to power your rig.
  • Motherboard – $90 –  ASRock MB-970EX4 Socket AM3+/ AMD 970/ AMD (best motherboard for mining at the moment). If it is out of stock, this one or this one are good alternatives.
     
  • Graphics Cards (GPU) –  $350 x 4  AMD Radeon R9 280x – This is one of the best graphics card for alt-currency mining. It is capable of over 750Kh/s per card, bringing your total rig power to 3,000 Kh/s. Stick with the Sapphire, Gigabyte, ASUS or MSI brands and avoid the HIS, Powercolor and XFX brands as they are known to have issues with mining. I would also recommend the AMD 7950 if you can find them for under $300/ea. They get around 700Kh/s and use significantly less power than the 280x when under-volted. There are several other recommended mining cards that will work with this rig guide listed here. Just remember to calculate the power requirements for whichever cards you decide to go with.
  • CPU – $40 – AMD Sempron 145 Processor – We’ve chosen the cheapest option here, since the CPU doesn’t affect mining efficiency.
  • RAM  – $50  –  4 GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
  • 1x to 16x Powered Riser Cables –  $6 x 4  –  PCI Express 1X to 16X Powered Riser Cables – These riser cables allow you to suspend the graphics cards abover the motherboard for better airflow/cooling. We recommend powered riser cables which plug directly into the PSU to reduce the wattage required from the motherboard. The 1x male end of the cable plugs into either the 1x or 16x slot on the motherboard, and the 16x end of the cable is where the graphics card gets plugged in.
  • Hard Drive –  $40  –  Small Solid State Drive
  • Case – $6 – Plastic Milk Crate (you might be able to pick one of these up at an office supply store for less). Alternatively, for a much more aesthetically pleasing build, check out the custom built cases designed and built by Rich Chomiczewski. I’ve personally used his cases and can recommend the excellent build quality and customer service he provides.
  • Extra Cooling  –  $30  –   Box Fan – Best cooling for a mining rig, as it pushes all that hot air away from the rig.
  • Operating System  –  $0-$90  –  Windows 8.1  – If you’re familiar with Linux you can of course download it for free (some folks consider Linux to be the best OS for litecoin mining, since it keeps your overall costs down, improving your litecoin mining ROI). If you want to load the OS from a CD you might want to pick up a $29 external USB powered DVD drive. Many laptops in the ‘thin & light’ category are shipping with no internal optical drive, so it will probably come in handy for other uses as well.
  • Monitor, Mouse and Keyboard – Most people already have this trio somewhere around the house, but I included it since you’ll need it to set up your rig. Once the rig is setup it can run without these as a ‘headless mining rig’.

If you’d like to trade Litecoins or any other Scrypt based currency to Bitcoin, I would recommend the Cryptsy exchange. Also, I personally use and highly recommend CoinBase for buying and selling your Bitcoin for USD here in the US. If you sign up through that link, they’ll give you $5 worth of Bitcoin to get you started as a reward for buying your first coin through them!

Putting it all Together – Assembling your Litecoin Mining Rig

Here’s a quick Youtube Video Assembly Overview followed by step-by-step instructions:

  1. Unpackage everything
  2. Install processor and RAM on motherboard
  3. Plug in all riser cables
  4. Place motherboard in plastic crate
  5. Plug in SATA hard drive
  6. Connect all GPUs to riser cables and fasten them to plastic crate evenly spaced out for maximum heat dissipation
  7. Plug in all power supply connections
  8. Connect mouse, monitor and keyboard and an internet connection (I used a USB WiFi adapter)
  9. Check all connections once more
  10. Fire it up! Install the OS if needed. Install Graphics card drivers. Install mining software. Make sure fans are doing their job. Fire up the mining software, tweak for maximum hasrate and let ‘er run!

Sidenote: If mining isn’t your thing, and you are just interested in purchasing some cryptocurrency as part of your investment portfolio, I personally use and recommend Voyager.  Trade $100 on the platform, and receive $25 of Bitcoin FREE. 

146 thoughts on “4 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Guide”

  1. Andre

    Awesome article, thank you for all the help, but I do have a question, hope you can answer it.

    I’m planning to build an open mining rig that would support 2~4x R9 280X, but I want to start with only 2x and eventually buy the other ones. I was thinking about getting the rest of the hardware that you suggested for the 4x 7950, but with a 1300W 80Plus Gold PSU of some sort. Would you suggest that? Is 1300W enough? The suggested ASRock mobo and Sempron CPU are sufficient? Thanks in advance and keep up the good work!

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      The motherboard and CPU will work equally well with a 4x GPU configuration. If your R9 280x cards are under-volted, the 1300 watt PSU is just barely enough. Undervolted, the R9 280x runs at around 250 watts while mining. That’s 1,000 watts for the cards which leaves 200 watts for system overhead (CPU,HDD,etc) and 100 watts left over. In general on a gold rated PSU, you want to shoot for a maximum of 90% of the power supplies rating. 90% of 1300 is 1170, so you’re just over at 1200 watts running 4 cards, but you should be fine. Alternatively, you could run two cheaper 750 watt PSU’s connected together with the ‘add2psu adapter’ for an equivalent 1500 watt supply of power.

      Reply ↓
  2. Naz

    Wow. Great site. I have never built a rig before. I think trying to make one of these will be a great learning experience.

    Are the cards SLI’d? Do the cards have to even be the same make/model?

    Thanks in advance!

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      SLI is used on Nvidia cards. The AMD equivalent is crossfire and no, they aren’t’t crossfired for mining. Ideally, you want all the same make/model, but I’ve run rigs with different AMD GPU’s without issue. It just requires a bit more configuration. As far as other makes, Nvidia is not recommended for mining. Their hash rate is pretty low in comparison to AMD.

      Reply ↓
  3. Luc

    @admin

    I’m running the EXACT same hardware as described above, what settings do you use to get maximum hashrates?

    Without any tweaks I’m getting around 560KH/s per card.. seen 600+ on these Sapphires!

    Anyone?

    Reply ↓
  4. Eric

    I’d been researching btc mining with asics but the wait time combined with getting in late seems like a major hurdle. Ltc mining seems like the next wave so Id like to get in earlier rather than later. How difficult is this process for someone who knows very little about computers? Your guides are pretty awesome and they make me think I could do it but I dont want to underestimate the process.

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      To be honest, if you know very little about computers it would be easier for you to just buy Litecoin, Worldcoin or whatever currency you want to get into. That being said, if you want to learn a lot about general desktop computer hardware and have some time to spend on a new hobby, this could work for you. It is a learning curve, though. That’s a decision you’ll have to make. 🙂 All the best to you!

      Reply ↓
  5. Dominik

    Do I need that powered riser cables for 4x HD7950? Every card has 2x 6pin power connectors to the power supply. So do I need that powered riserer even if I connect it over the 6pin cable to the power supply?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      The powered riser cables are supplemental to the power the cards receive through the motherboard. You can run a maximum of 3 cards on non-powered risers, but I just recommend running them all on powered risers since the price points aren’t as different as they used to be.

      Reply ↓
  7. Phlego

    Thanks so much for this guide. Helped me a LOT. Putting together a rig more or less according to the shopping list at the moment. Have it running smoothly with 2 cards at the moment after some troubleshooting. First thought the ooold SSD I pulled from an old rig was causing BSODs (Win7 install) and ackward behaviour during setup. Lot’s of random crashes.
    With trial and error I nailed it down to the memory. I honestly do not know whether I just ended up with a bad stick of 4 GB Corsair DDR3 RAM. I did update the MB’s Bios and it got a bit better, still crashing randomly though. The handbook and website call for 2 or 4 sticks and NOT 1 or 3. Hence I went ahead and ordered 2 x 2 GB put them in and poof, all issues gone.
    Again – do not know if its an issue or if I got unlucky. The manufacturer recommendation is 2 or 4 sticks though. Went with G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) from Badgers website. No problems anymore.

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      Every once in awhile, you’ll get a bad stick of memory when building custom PCs. I’ve had it happen several times in my career. That’s when a good return policy is important. Glad to hear you got it figured out.

      Reply ↓
  8. POL

    Good day, can someone tell me if i want to start mining eith this rig as author wrote what currency should i start ? BTC/LTC are to strong dificulty? need to search another currency?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      GPU mining is no longer profitable using the SHA-256 Bitcoin protocol. Litecoin mining and other Scrypt based currencies are quite profitable to mine at the time of this comment.

      Reply ↓
  9. Mark

    Thanks for the helpful guide. This is my first system build in a while, so it’s been fun.

    So I’m configuring my rig according to these specs and I can’t get my brain around this issue:
    If can run power directly to the video card from the PSU via the PCI-E power cable, why would I also power the riser?
    Or should I not run power to the video card directly?

    I could run power to the riser, to the video card, or both. Any thoughts?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      Because these motherboards aren’t designed to handle 6 GPUs running at full power constantly, it is important to use powered riser cables which provide supplemental power directly from the PSU. So yes, both.

      Reply ↓
  10. James

    Hi There,

    I am building this quad 7970 mining rig and I am thinking of getting a 990FX Extreme4 instead of 970 Extreme4 for the Motherboard. Is this a possible configuration?

    Reply ↓
  11. Brian Blackwell

    Does anyone have any thoughts on whether you can get a better ROI by using cheaper/used GPUs? It seems like there might be some sweet spot where you could find older cards that aren’t popular with gamers, but would be useful for mining. Or has the demand from mining driven up the cost of these cards as well?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      The potential is there, but usually older GPU’s use more electricity which cancels out the savings on the card purchase. Of course, if you have free electricity, this route might work out for you.

      Reply ↓
  12. Niels

    I’ve build it, but it gets to hot, the problem is that the cards back side gets warm so the next card sucks the warm air in. This results in the gpu’s heating up each other. My box fan can not fix this issue?

    Reply ↓
  13. Mark C

    Hi,
    How viable is mining LTC now that the difficulty has raised again by another 100 or Bitcoin at the moment?

    Reply ↓
  14. Mike

    I built the 4 card rig using your recommendations with the exception of using MSI cards. While it is working well, after it warms up for a while it is pulling 1400w which obviously has me concerned with using a 1250W powersupply.

    Reply ↓
      1. Mike

        I’m using BAMT, which I love since I can run it on a thumb drive, saves me the cost of a hard drive and a Windows license, but sadly I’ve never gotten voltage changes to take effect under Linux. Given the small price difference between the Seasonic power supply (I’m very impressed) and the 1600w LEPA, I would personally go with the LEPA if I was doing it again just for the safety margin.

        All that said, thank you for posting all of this. You really saved me a lot of research time. I ran all 4 cards with non-powered risers for about a month since I bought a boat load of them, but changed 1 of them to powered for peace of mind.

        Also FYI to others, I have these cards. 4 of these mining bitcoins and the above setup uses about 1330 watts once warmed up using BAMT and cgminer. Mining litecoins uses up to 1470 watts at times (no undervolting).

        Based on my experience and I would love to hear contradictions – the cards that do not use the reference style fans are definitely quieter, but they run hotter and are much more difficult to keep cool because they don’t force the hot air out the back.

        And lastly, I bought 6 of the Sterilite crates and they work, but the ones by United Solutions like this are superior. I bought mine at Lowe’s Hardware for $6, but they don’t sell them online. The United Solutions crates are about an inch wider and made of a more rigid plastic. Because it is more rigid, there is less plastic on each of the beams in the grid meaning the holes are larger and airflow is noticeably better not to mention more room for the cards. The Sterilite crates are so soft that you can actually cut them with a good pair of scissors!

        Reply ↓
  15. marqee

    What About the Power Bill ?
    1 month 24h/24h = 400 $ earn.
    And how much you spend for electricity ?

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *